because i still don’t have a film scanner myself(voel u maar schuldig Caroline! :-p), i can’t really show you new stuff at the moment… so i’m just going to upload some older stuff for now…

starting off with a portrait series i made about people living in Schaarbeek. Schaarbeek is located in Brussels and is home to a large Turkish immigrant community, as well as to other immigrant communities. you can find so many different nationalities over there; Turkish, Moroccan, African, Bulgarian, Armenian,… and you’ll also notice that in these portraits ;-) still… it’s actually quite an interesting place to take pictures!

the first photo is a portrait of Rafi. he’s an Armenian guy and lives in Schaarbeek since 1999. he didn’t speak a word Dutch, French, English or German(that’s about it for my languages.. my Armenian isn’t all that good :-p). luckily, some of his friends accompanied him and they spoke a little bit French, so they translated for me(well they tried.. communication wasn’t all that easy, but we had a good laugh.. that’s for sure! :-D).

in the end, i was allowed to take a few pictures. because i couldn’t understand him and he couldn’t understand me, i just turned his head the way i wanted, had him put the cigarette in his mouth et voila! :-D i printed the original photo on 30×40 fibre-based paper(warmtone), which looks absolutely stunning!

the next photo is a portrait of a turkish lady. i still don’t know her name because we couldn’t understand each other *yay for language barriers :-/*.

however… she was sitting there on her doorsteps and i just liked the way she was sitting there and enjoying the good weather. so i wanted to ask her if i could take her picture, but she didn’t really understand what i wanted to do. in the end, she gave me permission to take some pictures *yay for body language!*(even though it took me a while to make her my intentions clear :-D).

next up is the portrait of Mpungi(yes that’s really his name! :-)). he’s such a great guy. before i took this picture, i already met him a few times. the first time i met him, i was taking pictures at night in Brussels and he tapped on my shoulder and spoke the magical words: “Jesus loves you!” :’-) i was quite surprised by that one sentence and had a conversation with him about why Jesus loved me. some time later, i saw him again in the Brussels North train station. he saw me, walked up to me and said that same sentence again. apparently he didn’t know me anymore :-p

a few months later, i was making these portraits in Schaarbeek and he just came out of a store. i walked up to him(of course he said that same sentence again.. some kind of trademark i guess!) and i asked if i could have his picture taken. he seemed very honoured that i had asked him.. so i put him against the wall and took some pictures. afterwards, he gave me a hug(no shit!) and meanwhile said: “peace on earth”. oh great moments that were! :-D

the last photo is a portrait of Attila and his son. he’s a truck driver and lives in Schaarbeek since 1970. he was just coming home from work(hence why he’s wearing a jacket in his kitchen :-D) and i ran to his car to ask whether i could take some pictures of him inside of his house. luckily he spoke French(well… not that my French is all that good, but it’s definitely better than Turkish :-p) and wanted to cooperate immediately. he was a very friendly man really.

once inside, his son immediately grabbed a camera out of a cabinet and started to show off his little digital camera. hehe ’twas quite funny :-D on the photo, you can still see a piece of camera in his hand…

too bad this print scan is quite fucked though. the dark areas have become big black stains during the scanning process :-( the print looks way better, believe me! the boy’s face is so dark here…

there… the first blog post on my new blog is a fact! i hoped you enjoyed it(even though most of you have probably seen these photos before…).

cheers!

bert